Award. Researcher wants to change the monitoring of seriously mental patients in Portugal
Manuela Silva classifies it as “hugely important” of 300 thousand euros that she will receive as the winner of the FLAD Science Award Mental Health 2022 “because it will allow us to carry out this project, which aims to explore an area that we do not yet have in Portugal and which is the of care for people with severe mental illness are also experienced by people with severe mental illness”.
The name of the award-winning project of this researcher from the Instituto de Saúde Global Mental de Lisboa – an institute by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Faculty of Medical Sciences of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública – is long and in English, Effectiveness of the Critical Time Intervention Model-Change of Tasks for people with serious illness caused by metals discharged from psychiatric internment establishments in Portugal. But in Portuguese it consists of carrying out a clinical trial of a psychological intervention successfully used in countries such as the United States and people to monitor serious mental patients, such as schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorders, after they leave a period of hospitalization.
“The project is a randomized clinical trial that intends to help people with severe mental disorders to reorganize their lives, not to be a treatment that is very basic in coming to the consultation, in which they make the modification, but in which there is a follow-up. DN Manuela Silva. “We know that there are great deficits in treatment in the area of mental health, mainly because one of the first problems is that people quickly end up in contact with the services and, therefore, are often unable to carry out a process of recovery,” adds an investigation.
The clinical trial will start in early 2023, with the recruitment of people who will follow close to the patient and who will begin intensive training, with the follow-up due to start at the end of the first year. “We are going to hire people with mental illness and also already linked to health but without training in mental health, and who will accompany nine people during hospitalization, go to their homes, will make a care plan with them and understand how this can be done. improves their quality of life, their adherence to therapy, what is part of their routines”, says a psychiatrist. “The essay goes two brothers, the people who will have the services that will have the care that are attended by the two services, for the care of the two services that will attend by the care services, which will have this pair of people who will attend . will accompany them for a few months”.
The three services involved in this study are the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte (Santa Maria and Pulido Valente hospitals), the Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Ocidental (Egas Mon and São Francisco Xavier hospitals) and the Beatriz Ângelo Hospital, in Loures. The objective, that the study will have a significant and significant center, is arranged 150, and it will be matched to the other half, through service that will welcome 2 patients in each of its patients.
The importance of one of these caregivers also being mentally ill is of great importance for the success of this trial, as explained by Manuela Silva. “On the one hand illness, because people with severe mental experiences often have trust issues and therefore being able to be with someone who lives similarly and who they perceive can help deepen their trust in health care and barrier that are often care that are often we have to take care of mental health, we have to take care of mental health and we are often careful of people.
As for the possibility of a methodology of this test being put into practice in the future at the National Health Service, this investigated believes that it could become a reality. “As things are very planned for mental health, but in December they began to determine that the services are reorganized and it is like this equipment in these intervention teams, in these mental health takes a long time to be launched. strategies for the country”, declares Manuela Silva. “These services are important for us to find people who are important for the organization of our mental problems, especially with the results that are important for the organization of our problems in our country”.